Archive for Future formats

Advent Calendar
Today’s Advent Calendar surprise is courtesy of Tim Waggoner (author of Nekropolis and Dead Streets). It may not be the most uplifting Christmas message you’ll read, but it’s certainly one of the most honest!

Un:Bound Video
After a few teething problems, the team at Un:Bound have launched their pilot video magazine, Un:Bound Video Editions. There’s a lot crammed into the half-hour, including a behind-the-scenes at Tor, some author interviews, Alasdair Stuart being kind and mean at the same time, and yours truly, giving the first in a series of publishing tips.

Put them together, and what do you get? That’s right – the Angry Robot Short Story Store.

Here’s the official Press Release type thing, but what it boils down to, is: From December 1st you can buy short stories (or “Angry Robot Nano Editions”) by our authors from our online eBook store (www.angryrobotstore.com) – at realistic prices. And if you buy lots, you get great discounts!

Digital publishing – it needn’t be rocket science…

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PRESS RELEASE

On December 1st 2010, Angry Robot will be launching “Nano Editions”. Exclusive to the publisher’s own webstore at angryrobotstore.com, Nanos are digital short stories by Angry Robot novelists, sold at sensible prices in ePub format, ready to load onto the world’s most popular eBook readers.

Most Nanos will be in the 5,000 – 15,000 word range. Shorter works than that will be automatically bundled with another story to ensure value for money.
Talking of which – stories will cost just 59p each (approximately US $0.95). Readers can bundle a collection of any 10 by any combination of authors, for only £3.49 (US$5.59). The files will be DRM-free and available worldwide. If demand for the stories takes off, AR plan to also sell them via eBook retailers.

Angry Robot Editor Lee Harris said, “Publishing is changing, but our role as publishers remains the same – to find cool stories and bring them to readers. This is another step in Angry Robot’s ongoing plan to embrace the new opportunities digital formats provide – and an excellent way for readers to sample unfamiliar authors, without breaking the bank.”

Authors included in the Nanos series include multi-million-selling novelist Dan Abnett and award-winning short fiction authors Kaaron Warren and Aliette de Bodard, along with many others. We will have at least 30 Nanos available for the December 1st launch, with more added at regular intervals.

I picked the Aztecs for a combination of reasons. I wanted a non-Western culture because I’d read far too many medieval fantasies and mysteries and wanted to go further afield. I didn’t know much about Aztec culture at the outset, other than their reputation for bloodthirstiness–which seemed to me a bit dodgy once I realised that it came from the accounts of the conquistadores, who were hardly saints themselves.

Head on over to Whatever to read a little more about the book, and about the type of research necessary to make a story like this as intelligent and as authentic as possible (not to mention as enjoyable).

Why not then head across to your favourite store and pick up a copy? The paperback is just US$7.99, or you can pick up an eBook for just $4.99 from angryrobotstore.com, or your favourite eBook retailer.

At the tie of writing this blog entry, Servant of the Underworld is at number 20 in the historical fantasy charts in the Amazon Kindle store! Pretty good for a book that was released just 2 days ago. (And as an added bonus, Amazon have reduced the price of their Kindle edition to just $3.99! Quick – go snap it up!)

And here’s a beautifully atmospheric book trailer, created by the author, herself:

Eight weeks and one day ago we had no titles available for purchase in the US and Canada. As of today, we have eighteen! EIGHTEEN! Our latest batch of titles has hit the States today, and hit it hard.

Don’t worry if you haven’t yet bought all of our titles – Christmas is just around the corner, and a stack of AR books would make anybody happy – just pop them all on your Christmas list.*

So, this is what you can expect when you walk into your favourite store this month:

SERVANT OF THE UNDERWORLD by Aliette de Bodard – a unique fantasy, set in the ancient Aztec City of Tenochtitlan. A priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood. Acatl, high priest, must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead. But how do you find someone, living or dead, in a world where blood sacrifices are an everyday occurrence and the very gods stalk the streets?

Andy Remic has pulled out all the stops with SOUL STEALERS – the second in the gloriously violent Clockwork Vampire Chronicles (The first, of course, was Kell’s Legend). In fact, he’s not just pulled out all the stops – he’s put them all back in again, just so they can be re-pulled! Now that’s dedication. The book has so much blood we considered printing it on red paper.

DAMAGE TIME is Colin Harvey‘s Philip K Dick-esque novel of near future America. SFX Magazine said that there’s “much to admire, particularly Harvey’s ability to twist a plot in unexpected directions.” A future classic, perhaps?

Chris Roberson‘s Angry Robot title is BOOK OF SECRETS – an adventure across America, that combines a mysterious artifact, classic pulp fiction and tales of derring-do. It’s what Angels and Demons might have been, if there were actually angels and demons in it.

THE ROAD TO BEDLAM is a sure-fire winner. A sequel to September’s Sixty-One Nails by your man, Mike Shevdon (and the highest selling fantasy title on the Kindle, at one point), it’s the story of what happened to Niallafter the events in the first book. Let’s just say, that it’s pretty devastating stuff! Urban fantasy at its very best.

CITY OF DREAMS AND NIGHTMARE is the debut novel by the always lovely, Mr Ian Whates. It’s set in the incredible, impossible city of Thaiburley – a vertical city where the rich live in the upper storeys and the poor fester in the levels below. When a young thief witnesses a murder on the top level, he must use all his street smarts to escape the killers, the law, and the creatures that dwell in his nightmare city. A must-read.

That’s a huge amount of reading, and we know that it’s difficult to read eighteen titles in just three months, so we’re not publishing anything in December, just so you’ll have plenty of time to catch up. How good we are to you. But be warned – come January we’ll be all up in your face, again!

Don’t forget, of course, that all these titles (and those from September and October) are available as eBooks from your favourite ebook store, or from our own palace of electronic goodness at angryrobotstore.com. Enjoy.

We’ve teamed up with Amazon US to offer Kindle users the chance to get Mike Shevdon’s critically-acclaimed (and hugely entertaining) Sixty-One Nails for free! This offer only lasts today (Monday 27th September), so hurry! (Note: this offer is restricted to readers in the US).

Just look what people have said about this superb urban fantasy:

“Sixty-One Nails is Neverwhere for the next generation. The pacing is spot-on, the characters engaging, and the world fits together beautifully to create a London that ought to be. I stayed up too late finishing it.”
– C.E. Murphy

“Mike Shevdon strikes sparks from the flinty core of English folklore, as a hero every reader can relate to finds he’s part of an incredible and scarily believable parallel realm. If you’ve been thinking urban fantasy has nothing fresh to offer, think again.”
— Juliet E. McKenna

“Mike Shevdon in this first novel gave me just what I need: main characters that I feel for, care about and could get invested in. Thanks for something new, sir, that has renewed my faith in modern fantasy. Oh, and he adds in some real London history here and there, and that is a great thing too. I can’t wait for the next book.”
— Deadwood Reviews

“Sixty One Nails is a novel I will remember for a very long time. 5*****”
— SF Book.com

“Here is the very best of urban fantasy… A highly-believable page-turner of a quest.”
— Aurealis Magazine

Honestly – we could go on, but we’re pretty sure you’d rather go read the book.

And while you’re there, why not pick up a copy of the sequel, The Road to Bedlam – at the time of writing, Amazon have it on sale for the great price of just $3.99!

If you’re an iPad/iPod/iPhone user, you can now download our first 8 titles through the iBookstore.

Titles available this month are:

Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic Zoo City by Lauren Beukes Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon Slights by Kaaron Warren Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe and Winter Song by Colin Harvey

We’re still waiting for Moxyland to go through the Apple approval process. Another batch of titles will be made available, soon.

And remember – these titles are already available from a number of eBook outlets, including Amazon US and Ca, Barnes & Noble, and our own eBook store (see top, right).

We’re big fans of eBooks, here at Angry Robot. Well, we’re big fans of books, and eBooks are just one of the formats that we love. We’ve been working furiously behind the scenes to get you eBook versions of our titles, and today we launch the first 9.

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

Slights by Kaaron Warren

Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett

Winter Song by Colin Harvey

The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe

Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon

The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic

Our eBooks can be purchased through a number of online retailers, including the Amazon US Kindle store*, Barnes and Noble, Sony Reader Store, and many others. In the UK you will shortly be able to purchase them through Amazon Kindle UK and Waterstones. Within a few days our titles will also appear in the Apple iBookstore.

Our eBooks are all currently priced at £3.50 (through UK retails) or $4.99 (overseas).

and if you purchase your eBooks through our own store, you can download them as often as you need to (in case you change eReading devices, for instance, or lose access to your copy for any other reason). And all downloads from angryrobotstore.comare DRM-free!

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Kindle US Note:

The search facility for these titles isn’t currently working at the Amazon.com Kindle store, so here are the direct links, while the techie gurus work their magic:

Barnes and Noble have just introduced a new model into their eReader range – the Nook WiFi is the same as their previously-available model, but with the 3G components stripped out. And at a price of US$149 (about £101) that’s a pretty attractive price point! Their 3G model has been reduced to £199, so it will be interesting to see how (if at all) Amazon responds with their Kindle pricing.

So – the start of a whole new chapter for eReader sales and purchasers, or the beginning of the end for dedicated eReading devices?

Recently, my wife and I did a spot of spring cleaning. There was one bookcase in particular, a chaotic jumble of books, ancient ornaments, and our not insubstantial CD collection. It was my wife who suggested we pack the CDs up and store them away. Why did we need to have access to them? We’d transferred the whole lot into iTunes in a lossless format, and that digital library was regularly backed up, so she suggested it was time to banish them to an inaccessible cupboard.

She was right, and I realised that the last physical CD we had bought had been in 2005. Read More→

We’ve been dying to break this news, and the ink is still wet on the contracts, but we are delighted (and a little bit intimidated) to announce that we have agreed to a limited run by the Royal Shakespeare Company of Kell’s Legend – The Musical.

Casting is yet to be confirmed, but there is already a director and a musical director attached, and Andy Remic will act as creative consultant (to ensure that no changes are introduced that conflict with events in future stories).

Leopold Earnest, Marketing Director of the RSC, told us:

This is a real divergence for the RSC. In 1988 we produced a musical version of Stephen King’s Carrie, but we’ve never before attempted high fantasy. We have been in solid discussions with Mr Remic for some time now, and we believe we have a script suitable for production at The Courtyard.

Check back in September for details of how you can win tickets to the opening night (November 12th).

Songs include:

* Axe no questions

* I’m just a love vachine

* For the Kell of it

* The Canker Can-Can

Script by Anthony Leigh, Book by James Meadows. An RSC/Angry Robot co-production.